Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Masias


Masías is one of those special people that seem to be in a lot of towns. He’s very slightly challenged, no teeth, he thinks he’s a little over 70 years old, lives on a small pension, hard worker, heart of gold. He’s almost impossible for me to understand. To be honest I get only about half of what he says and try to piece together what he’s saying from those clues.
He always wears the same clothes and always wears an old wool suit jacket. I gave him a parka once, never seen him wear it. He walks everywhere and Never looks around. You’ll see him walking (he walks rather fast), slightly bent over, and watching the ground about 6 feet in front of him. You can honk or wave all you want but you’ll be wasting your time.
He’s very faithful to church and always gives in special offerings. We all know he doesn’t have much but that doesn’t matter to Masías. He loves to give.
One other thing Masías loves to do is share a testimony in church. You can just about count on him getting up and sharing. Sunday was no exception. Usually when Masías gets up most folks get a small smile. Folks here seem pretty tolerant of folks like Masías. Pastor even smiled and quietly said to me at least you’ll know what he’s saying since he always shares the same thing. Then to everyone’s surprise he started giving thanks to the Lord for bringing Rhonda and I back. He said we’d been gone too long and how happy he was that we’d returned.
A few years ago he started coming by the house looking for some odd jobs. He needed a little extra to get to the end of the month so we started finding some stuff for him to do. What he likes and does the most is split fire wood. Monday he showed up again and went right to the wood shed. He chopped quite a pile before he was finished and left happy promising to return in a few days.

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